Provincial Wood Supply Strategy

The Provincial Wood Supply Strategy is a consolidated wood supply report and plan of action for Ontario. The primary purpose is to identify critical wood supply issues and provide approaches (strategies) to address those issues.

The document compares the supply forecasts from approved forest management plans, aggregated to a regional level, against the current level of industrial demand in order to quantify potential shortages and surpluses. This information is examined in the context of the overall wood supply and demand situation in the Boreal and Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forests to identify the critical wood supply issues. Strategies are then recommended to help address these wood supply issues.

The Strategy has been developed by the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) with input from the forest industry and the environmental community, to address concerns over the long-term sustainability of wood supply in Ontario and in response to Condition 48 of the Declaration Order regarding MNR’s Class Environmental Assessment Approval for Forest Management on Crown Lands in Ontario.

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Provincial Wood Supply Strategy - (PDF, 1.5MB 94 pages) 
 

• Appendix 1 - Annual Wood Supply Data for each Forest and Forest Region in Ontario, as well as Room to Grow utilization benchmarks. Provided in chart form in Excel format:
  
  Available years - 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004 

• Appendix 2 - Best Practices for Wood Supply Modelling (PDF 143KB 10 pages)

Contact information for the Provincial Wood Supply Strategy:

Dan Rouillard
Ministry of Natural Resources

Telephone: (705) 945-5743  e-mail: Dan.Rouillard@ontario.ca

Executive Summary

This document presents a picture of the wood supply and a set of strategies for the Province of Ontario. It was produced by the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) with input from key stakeholders. The primary purpose of the Provincial Wood Supply Strategy is to identify critical wood supply issues and provide approaches (strategies) for addressing those issues.

There are two primary objectives focused on sustaining wood supply within the bounds of overall forest sustainability: 

• To sustain a continuous, predictable, long-term wood supply necessary for industrial processing facilities; and
• To increase the level of long-term available wood supply. 

The Provincial Wood Supply Strategy responds to legal commitments described in Condition 48 of the Declaration Order Regarding MNR’s Class Environmental Assessment Approval for Forest Management on Crown Lands in Ontario (MNR -71) as released in June 2003. This strategy document also supports the MNR vision of sustainable development and mission of ecological sustainability. The Crown Forest Sustainability Act states that Crown forests are managed to meet social, economic and environmental needs of present and future generations. This document replaces in whole the Regional Wood Supply Strategies, published by the MNR in 2003.

This strategy document is provincial in scope. Each of the three MNR administrative regions has a separate section to provide a regional context and a discussion of regional scale issues. The significant issues and related strategies are identified within the area of the Boreal and Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forest regions. The strategies themselves will be implemented at the provincial, regional and/or local management unit level. The scope and implementation is described within the discussion for each of the strategies.

The Provincial Wood Supply Strategy is linked directly to the Ontario Forest Accord and the Ontario Forest Accord Advisory Board’s (OFAAB) proposal for “Room to Grow.” The OFAAB recommended in its final report that the regional wood supply strategies serve as the instrument for benchmarking the long-term wood supply available to Ontario’s forest industry and for identifying the threshold that would initiate “Room to Grow” sharing discussions. Appendix 1 contains the utilization benchmarks necessary to facilitate this process.

The foundation for this strategy document is the wood supply database contained in Appendix 1. This database graphically presents wood supply, demand and utilization information for each management unit and species group. The information is then aggregated into regional and provincial graphs of wood supply and demand. Part 2 of this strategy document examines wood supply and demand in a regional context. The analysis was conducted to determine the ability of the Crown forests to continue to supply Ontario’s forest industry into the future, and to identify wood supply issues. No attempt was made to forecast future demand levels, or to predict future trends in the forest products sector. The dynamic nature of the forest industry is purposefully outside the scope of this wood supply strategy.

Part 3 is the essence of the document. It contains the significant issues and the strategies recommended to address those issues.

Boreal Forest Issues and Strategies

Following an analysis of the data and an examination of the forest management context, two issues were identified in the Boreal Forest:

• Future wood supply drops below current demand; and,
• Quality of wood supply information. 

These two issues are also relevant to the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forest although the context is different. Hence, the strategies addressing these issues are provincial in scope.

Across the Boreal Forest, wood supply is predicted to fall below the level of industrial demand in the near future. The wood supply gap, which has been forecast for many years, is primarily the result of an age-class imbalance in the forest itself, but this situation has been compounded by a number of other factors.

The forecast for the two administrative regions within the Boreal Forest predicts that the spruce-pine-fir (SPF) supply will fall below the demand level in 5 to 10 years and take 80 years to fully recover. For poplar, the forecast is for supply to fall below demand in 15 years, with recovery in about 70 years. The supply gap is by far the most critical issue facing the forest industry in this part of the Province. The developing gap between wood supply and demand presents an unavoidable dilemma – increase the wood supply or reduce mill consumption.

The second issue applies across the entire province. The ability to accurately predict wood supply is limited by the quality of the information on which we base wood supply projections within forest management planning. The quality of information is strongly tied to the issue of wood supply. Information quality affects wood supply from two perspectives. First, better information increases confidence in the conclusions regarding the nature and degree of the wood supply gap. Second, more reliable information allows forest managers to make decisions which optimize the management and use of forest resources. For example, more accurate resource inventory and increased knowledge of forest succession will allow for improved decisions concerning the scheduling of forest stands for harvesting.

Eleven strategies are proposed to help mitigate these two issues within both the Boreal Forest and the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forest. They are:

1. Review the wood demand for mills;
2. Provide demand information to planning teams to help set appropriate plan objectives for wood supply;
3. Promote best practices for forest management modelling;
4. Improve growth and yield information;
5. Improve forest resources inventory;
6. Improve the knowledge of stand condition and forest succession;
7. Increase utilization of available wood:
8. Use silviculture to increase forest productivity;
9. Monitor the effectiveness of silvicultural treatments;
10. Implement a fire management strategy for Ontario; and,
11. Ensure guide effectiveness and efficiency.

Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forest Issues and Strategies

Five wood supply issues were identified as significant and particular to the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forest: 

• Current shortage of high-quality sawlogs and veneer in the region;
• Long-standing surplus of low-grade hardwoods;
• Sustainability of the private land harvest;
• Long-term regional trend towards declining poplar supplies; and,
• Regeneration problems in older white pine shelterwood treatments. 

Strategies 1 to 11 for the Boreal Forest, which address the issues of long-term wood supply and the quality of information, also pertain to the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forest.

There are nine additional strategies which pertain specifically to the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forest:

12. Continue efforts to improve the growing stock after harvest through proper tree marking and stand improvement practices;
13. Continue efforts to minimize logging damage to residual trees;
14. Study methods to minimize logging damage done by mechanized harvesting;
15. Salvage high-quality trees with high mortality risk during tree marking;
16. Maximize the harvest of available pulpwood;
17. Give support for permits to export tolerant hardwood pulpwood;
18. Conduct a private land wood supply study within Southern Region;
19. Advise poplar using industries of the forecasted declining poplar supply; and,
20. Ensure that past white pine shelterwood treatments are regenerated in accordance with the requirements of their licence.

The Provincial Wood Supply Strategy and the strategies contained herein are not meant to be prescriptive. The intent of this initiative is to provide information and a suite of tools to help manage wood supply issues to meet future needs. When implemented, the strategies will move forest management towards a secure, predictable supply of wood for industry and the potential of surplus for additional parks and protected areas.